Hi all, thank you very much for sharing your experiences. I'm 38 years old but my awareness about MD only started when I started my spiritual journey last November, first with the Enneagram of personality. In this enneagram I’m a number 3, which is the person called “the achiever” but is not exactly that. My vanity rules my ego, due to a lack of love during my childhood (I lived a hostile childhood and sexual abuse when I was 14), so I don’t consider myself valuable for who I’m but for what others think about me. Its like I need validation from others to feel special, and this compulsive need of feeling special makes me go to my fantasy world constantly, as in there is where I can fulfil of these emotions. So in order to fulfil my need of being special I spend most of the time in fantasy, so I don’t need real people to give me this feeling, I hope I’m explaining myself properly. The result is that I am the most happier person in this world as I have everything I need, but the sense of emptiness its very difficult to explain, together with the fear of losing control of it or not being able for example to mind my children if I have them in the future (I remember my mother spending so much time in her room doing this and ignoring her 5 children).
I develop MD when I was 6 years old. I currently dedicate about 4 hours a day on a normal day, being the entire day if I am on my own at home.
My fantasies are of two types: represented verbally and gestures if I am alone (they are the most recurrent) ; and mentally if there are people around or risk that someone appears. The mental ones happen as well if I'm traveling in public transport or if my husband is driving the car.
Most of the time they are activated with music but for many years now I have been able to represent them without music, just to avoid making noise. For example, if I'm at work, an email from a client can act as a trigger, so I have to go to the toilet to act out the fantasy. At work I can do this more than 10 times per day. I can't do it by listening to music with headphones, as this prevents me from having full control of the space (watching for someone coming). If I know that I am totally alone and there is no risk of someone showing up, then I could do it with headphones.
I have tried to record myself on video since I thought that if I saw myself doing it this would generate a rejection and I was going to be able to stop doing it, but it is not possible for me to record myself since my brain is alert to any eye (in this case the camera would be the eye). It's like having an alert sensor in my brain to protect me from someone seeing me doing it (it's the best way I can explain it).
In my fantasies I can be myself or any person / being (including animals, but this is more unusual), and also I am everyone else at the same time. That is, not only do I speak but I think about what I am going to respond to while the other person is speaking to me. Not only do I feel what I say, but I feel what the other / other people are
of me and this creates any kind of emotion on me. It is like being in this world, but on a non-physical plane. I can be anywhere, in any time, real or fantastic, with any person or group of people, being myself and all of them (and their thoughts, judgments) at the same time. I can see them, even if I don't see them with my physical eye. I can feel any emotion, even crying, laughing or feeling some physical pain (the latter I do less). 99% of my fantasy is related to my vanity, that is, my need to play a role to get the gaze or approval of others. I can act out the same fantasy as many times in a row as I need to satisfy the need for feeling the wanted emotion. I can also represent the same fantasy for several years in addition to the ones that I spontaneously represent with the things that happen to me on a daily basis. I also have a kind of obsessive disorder that I don't care much about (movements with the mouth, repetition of sounds, movements with the eyelids, touching objects a certain number of times ...). I think that when I'm in fantasy I do repetitive motions with my hands, but I also gesture like I normally would during a conversation.
I have used the fantasy with good purposes like studying. When I was in college I used this to study acting as I was the teacher so I was basically teaching, this allowed me to finish my degree with honours (but I have to say that I also wasted a lot of time so I had to study for more hours). I also used this to visualize situations that ended becoming real, like a promotion at work, win a gold medal in Taekwondo (when I was not even goof at it) or being invited to do a conference about my projects in college. All of these experiences born in my fantasy became real. In some point felt kind of magical for me so I didn’t have any issue with it other than the shame and the feeling that I wasn’t normal like everybody else. Hiding who I really am so my love ones don’t think I should go to a mental health institution.
When they are activated by music, or by something I hear or read, I do it consciously. But I also do it unconsciously anytime when I am alone (toilet, shower, driving…), here is when the alert sensor that I have in my brain helps me. It's like an automatic ability to see myself from the outside, as if I had a CCTV system working for me. I have only noticed this recently, when I have tried to stop doing it, before I was not even aware of it because for me its just normal. Also, I live with this CCTV system with me 24/7, I can see how people see me every second of my life, I can only stop this during meditation.
I never asked for help, only last year I found in the Internet Eli Somer's research but still didn’t consider I had a problem.
I can clearly see fantasy like a self-defense mechanism that served me in childhood to survive the lack of love
The conclusion I reached after several spiritual retreats and meditating on this during these moments of expanded consciousness is to focus on understanding where my vanity comes from. Understand that trauma made me believe that I am not worth because of who I am but for what others think of me. Currently I practice daily meditation (with my husband by my side, since if I am on my own fantasy becomes active and I cannot meditate) and I also continue attending spiritual retreats in order to get to the root of the matter. One of the consequences that most affect me in daily life is the lack of spontaneity, it is as if I need to represent everything before it happens in real life. I could explain a lot more but I hope that with this you can understand well.
Gestalt therapy and the Enneagram makes you become ware of your real personality so once you know this (which is not easy) you can understand the root of the issue. Everything I have read about this including Eli Somer's treatment only treat the symptoms but not the root. So only understanding myself, with integrations in spiritual retreats, staying present seems to be the light at the end of this tunnel. What I'm doing now is allowing myself to go to the fantasy and after that stop, take a breath and think why I had to go there this time (for me is always my vanity, my needs to get people's attention). I try to write the reason just to continue working on this in the retreats.
I told my husband last weekend and he still love me. He was impressed by this as a brilliant self defense mechanism but he agrees that I don't need it anymore. I have to say that telling him have been the biggest relief in my entire life.
I hope my experience will help others. I'll be sharing my progression here very often.